This article reports on the findings of an industry workplace experience project involving lecturers in South Africa's technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges, against the backdrop of new legislation and the realization that college lecturers' industry-related skills are in question. Its focus is on the nature of TVET lecturer industry-based workplace learning and the internal dynamics of its implementation in the college and employer systems. The article provides background on workplace-based learning for TVET lecturers and contrasts this form of workplace learning with forms used for students. After providing a critical analysis of methods used to theorize workplace-based learning, a model is employed to describe and analyse lecturers' experiences, with the aim of informing national and international knowledge and practice. The study supports the argument that workplace-based learning for TVET lecturers is not the same as for students. While students are exposed to workplaces to provide them with orientation and initial skills for future careers, workplace-based learning for lecturers is designed to improve knowledge development competencies. TVET lecturers undertake workplace-based learning to improve their knowledge of practice and so improve their theorization and teaching skills. The article points to the need for further research on and theorizing of industry-based workplace learning for lecturers.

The National Certificate (Vocational) (NC(V)) was introduced into South Africa’s system of vocational training to ‘solve problems of poor quality programmes, lack of relevance to the economy, as well as low technical and cognitive skills of TVET [technical and vocational education and training] graduates’. The NC(V) did not, however, meet expectations, partially because of systemic difficulties. This article reports on research conducted among students who studied on the NC(V) Civil and Construction programme in an effort to identify appropriate corrections that could be made by college management. The research project made use of Tinto’s Student Integration Model to identify reasons for both student attrition and student persistence. The study provides information on the predicament facing TVET Civil and Construction students and has broad relevance for practitioners operating in higher and post-school education.

South Africa’s policy frameworks for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and adult and continuing education and training (ACET) lecturers require that the work-integrated learning (WIL) element of programmes include WIL in appropriate ‘industry settings’ to ensure that TVET lecturers develop expertise in both teaching their subjects and preparing their students for the demands of the workplace. Whereas the country’s education faculties have a strongly developed practice of school-based WIL, none currently offers a formal programme that includes WIL in industry. International literature on teacher placement in industry thus largely concerns the in-service placement of practising educators to develop and update their industry knowledge and experience. In South Africa, some institutions have embarked on projects that have developedknowledge of industry WIL for TVET college lecturers, one of these being the SSACI-EDTP SETA WIL for Lecturers Project, through which more than 400 college lecturers have completed a work placement, conducted between 2014 and 2017. It provides a significant amount of information on the possible nature and implementation of the industry-based WIL component of the lecturer qualifications currently being developed. Using the Shulman and Shulman (2004) framework on teacher learning, this article analyses the project. It seeks to deepen the understanding of the nature of lecturer learning through WIL and also to contribute to the national, African and broader international discourse on the placement in industry of vocational educators and articulation between the worlds of work and education.

This article investigates the relevance of the National Certificate Vocational (NCV) tourism programme for the South African tourism industry in terms of skills needed by tourism students to work in the tourism industry after graduating. The NCV programmes were introduced in 2007 at public Further Education and Training Colleges (now Technical, Vocational Education and Training Colleges), with the phasing out of certain national technical education (NATED) Report 191 programmes, known as N-Programmes. Research was conducted in the form of an empirical questionnaire survey. A mixed methods approach, using a quantitative and qualitative methodology, was employed to gather relevant data. The results suggest that NCV tourism students are employable in small, medium-sized and microenterprises once they graduate, but that graduates need more experience and practical knowledge to be employable in the wider tourism labour market. The results indicate that more relevant NCV tourism curricula are needed to make the qualification of greater applicability to the South African tourism industry.

Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) lecturers play an important role in providing a competent workforce that can contribute to economic development. To develop a competent and employable workforce TVET college lecturers need a combination of qualifications and experience that provides them with workplace-related competency, teaching or pedagogic competency and qualifications both for which they prepare their students and which are regarded as necessary for learning to be properly facilitated. Research has shown that few South African TVET college lecturers have adequate academic, workplace and teaching qualifications. This article reports the deficiencies in qualifications and experience of lecturers at TVET colleges in South Africa and the implications of the identified deficiencies. While a substantial number of lecturers had academic qualifications, clear deficiencies were found in workplace related qualifications and experience, as well as in teaching qualifications.